On the opening night of West Side Story, Aubrey Dan arrived at the Toronto Centre for the Arts in a purple shirt.

It was early May and that morning a thick fog blurred parts of downtown. By evening, pewter clouds floated across the North York skyline, creating an eerie atmosphere as cars rumbled up and down Yonge toward the theatre.

While patrons queued near the lobby, anticipating a new production of the classic Bernstein-Sondheim musical about rival gangs in New York City, Dan mingled with his customers, shaking hands and doffing his trademark fedora. This would be one of his final performances as an impresario.

Six months earlier, in secrecy, the president of Dancap Productions made an agonizing decision: The show could not go on. The upstart theatre company he launched in 2007 would be shuttered by season’s end. It was time for the curtain to fall on Dan’s dream of importing Broadway shows to Toronto.

Beauty and the Beast opened at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts on Tuesday.

Million Dollar Quartet premieres at the Toronto Centre for the Arts next week. When they close, on July 22 and 29, respectively, so will Dancap, save for a Jersey Boys tour currently on a four-city jaunt across Western Canada.

Referring to the warring factions in West Side Story, someone asked Dan if he was a Jet or a Shark. In his purple shirt, the colour of one gang, he said: “I’m a Shark, absolutely. I’m the outsider. I’m the guy that was not wanted in the neighbourhood. It was a turf war.”

He tells a story.

During rehearsals for a production years ago, a young actor kept standing in front of the late John Neville whenever the legendary thespian delivered a line. Someone discreetly asked Neville why he didn’t rebuke this boorish conduct.

Neville shrugged it off with a smirk.

But during opening night, whenever that young actor had a line, Neville bent down and casually pulled up his socks. The rookie became invisible. All eyes were trained on the crouching veteran.

Mirvish delivers the moral of the story in a soft-spoken cadence: “If you don’t co-operate in the theatre, you are making a big mistake.”

Here’s another story.

It’s the mid-90s. Mirvish is locked in battle with Livent Inc., the theatre company that soared before crashing and burning, engulfed by a financial scandal that would leave founder Garth Drabinsky behind bars.

Before the fraud emerged, both companies were jockeying for The Lion King. One Friday afternoon, executives from Disney called Mirvish with some grim news. There were specific orders, from the highest corporate levels, to go with Drabinsky.

Mirvish was gobsmacked.

Due to confidentiality agreements, nobody will discuss the specifics of what happened next. But one source familiar with the incident says Mirvish did not sulk or protest. Instead, he devised a plan that would save Disney $15 million in production costs if they reconsidered.

They did.

Mirvish used tactical manoeuvering to smother Drabinsky’s persuasive charm. The Lion King ran for nearly four years. But there is something neither Drabinsky nor Mirvish could have predicted: The Lion King would be one of the last long-running, commercial blockbusters to roar inside Toronto.

The business of theatre was about to change. As it turns out, Aubrey Dan was marching into a perfect storm.

And it’s not for a lack of productions.

In 2011, according to the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts, there were 227 productions in the GTA. There are 187 professional theatre, dance and opera companies, 62 venues and 38,269 seats, not including outdoor venues, smaller theatres (399 seats or less) and comedy clubs.

Unlike the past, however, content is now consumed by locals.

In 2006, the year before Dancap Productions was born, Toronto welcomed 2,403,676 overnight visitors from the United States, according to data from Statistics Canada and Tourism Toronto.

This number declined year-over-year until 2010, when it dipped below the 2 million threshold for the first time since 2003. And of all overnight visitors who arrived in 2010 for pleasure, only 6.2 per cent cited theatre as a “top activity.”

“In the old days, people would come to town to see Phantom and Cats, and then they’d come and see Forever Plaid or I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change,” says producer Jeffrey Latimer, who managed the New Yorker Theatre for 11 years.

“I could run a show for two years because so many people were coming up from Rochester and Cleveland and Pittsburgh.”

The vanishing American tourist has short-circuited supply and demand.

“There are not enough people in this city for the amount of entertainment that is being offered, to be perfectly frank,” says Dan Brambilla, chief executive at the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. “There is still a reluctance to purchase tickets and spend money on non-durable goods. And when people do spend money, I think they spend it at the very, very last minute. So trying to get advance ticket sales is very difficult in this climate.”

Mirvish Productions used to run newspaper ads in the United States. Their customer catchment area was once considered a six-hour drive from Toronto.

In the summer of 2001, before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, close to 60 per cent of the audience at any long-running Mirvish show was American. Last summer, the number had plunged to less than 1 per cent.

The explosion of the U.S. market pumped millions into related sectors such as food and hospitality. It also allowed producers to extend the runs of blockbuster hits.

So what happened?

Within the past decade, the loonie has flirted with parity, fuel prices have more than doubled, protectionism has emerged stateside as a political cudgel and border crossings now require a passport, something a majority of Americans do not have.

The Toronto theatre scene used to reach American travellers. Now American travellers going to the theatre never reach Toronto.

Shea’s Performing Arts Center in Buffalo, for example, had 13,100 season ticket holders last year — a record high since the theatre started presenting Broadway shows in 1987.

Then there was the SARS outbreak in 2003. While there is a rule in theatre about never refunding, Mirvish returned in excess of $10 million in advance ticket sales for Mamma Mia! and The Lion King, including to an Eagle Scout troop in Michigan that phoned David personally with concerns about the viral contagion.

“We couldn’t hold on to the money,” he says.

“We felt the reputation of the city was more important.”

As the city slowly recovered, it was Mirvish who cemented his own reputation as a leader in the arts community.

He rallied industry players. There were new marketing initiatives targeted within the province under the slogan “Vacation in Ontario.” More than 500,000 discount packages with restaurants, hotels and attractions were eventually sold.

The theatre community, galvanized by Mirvish, coalesced around a spirit of unity. But in some corners, the search was already on for the next money man, the next risk taker who could fill the glitzy void left by Drabinsky.

He talks about his life as an accidental impresario.

“I never planned to get into the theatre business,” he says, removing his watch and placing it on the table. “I can’t sing. I can’t act. I didn’t grow up in the theatre business. But I’ve been a theatregoer for many, many years.”

He tells a story.

In 2002, a Canadian Stage board member called and asked for sponsorship help. Dan, the scion of pharmaceutical billionaire Leslie Dan, had made his own fortune in private equity. His interest in theatre — he was once a Mirvish subscriber — is matched only by his interest in philanthropy.

Dan agreed to help and soon reconnected with David Abel, then general manager at Canadian Stage, and an old friend from York Mills Collegiate. At a subsequent lunch with artistic director Martin Bragg, Dan listened before asking two questions: “Why isn’t there more Broadway theatre in Toronto? Why don’t we develop a relationship?”

Canadian Stage and Dancap Private Equity Inc. partnered on three shows: Urinetown (2004), Ain’t Misbehavin’ (2005) and a revival of Hair (2006).

This was Dan’s practical training. And the learning curve was steep.

“How do I put this the right way?” asks Bragg, now executive director at Alberta Ballet. “I kind of gave him his start in the business and ended up giving him what I consider to be an MBA education, if not a PhD education in producing theatre.”

According to one source familiar with both parties, there was to be a fourth Canadian Stage-Dancap collaboration on a little show yet to appear on the cultural radar: Jersey Boys.

Des McAnuff, then artistic director at La Jolla Playhouse in California, where the jukebox musical originated, invited Abel and Bragg to see a performance. There were subsequent discussions with Broadway producer Michael David over the Canadian rights.

“But then one day, Aubrey stopped returning calls,” says the source. “He went completely around CanStage. That’s when he decided to launch his own company.”

Dan says the decision was actually made during Ain’t Misbehavin’, after a dispute over revenue splitting: “When you piss off an entrepreneur, at some point they are going to say, ‘I’m going to do this on my own.’”

The net result was Dan went from hobby investor to active producer.

“Toronto needed somebody who had the funding, who had the vision, who had the idea that a monopoly in Toronto alone is not going to bring in the amount of shows that the city can warrant,” he says. “People can say what they want about Garth Drabinsky. But there are positives. He did build these theatres. He did train these people. And they all wanted a leader who could zero in and find those great shows.”

But finding great shows proved vexing.

Dan did not own a theatre. His plan to sign a long-term deal with the Toronto Centre for the Arts — the facility Drabinsky put on the map with lavish productions of Show Boat, Sunset Boulevard and Ragtime — was fraught with roadblocks. The city, which operates the theatre, was understandably skittish about committing to anyone given the financial mess left behind when Livent imploded.

Dan had multiple meetings, including one with former mayor David Miller. He encouraged the city to take his money in exchange for access to a theatre that was dark most nights.

The city finally agreed. Dan had a home, albeit a rental in North York.

“I think he faced some unique challenges with most of his shows being in a location that’s not ideal,” says Derrick Chua, a theatre producer and entertainment lawyer. “I think most theatregoing people are still downtown.”

Others wondered if Dan should have secured real estate before getting into the wildly unpredictable game of commercial theatre.

“Imagine if he would have actually taken some of that money and invested in a space in the Queen West area or the King West area, and actually built his own theatre in the downtown core,” says producer Marcello Cabezas. “Something he would actually control. Something he would own. Something he would get ancillary revenue on. Something where he could schedule shows whenever he wanted.”

Dan proved to be a very good tenant. Councillor Gary Crawford, chair of Mayor Rob Ford’s task force on the arts and theatres, is now searching for new tenants to occupy the 1,727-seat theatre that was built site-specific for large productions.

As Crawford observes: “I hope someone else will come in here.”

But in the world of commercial theatre, renting is at odds with the economics.

“It’s not like the movies where you judge things by how many millions it takes in on the first weekend,” says David Weiner, a former public relations executive who has advised both Drabinsky and Dan. “It’s the opposite. A show starts, people start talking about it, the reviewers review it and the audience builds over time. Aubrey had no capacity to have open-ended runs. That was the killer in the end.”

Then there was the issue of quality, raised when some Dancap productions used non-equity actors. Behind the scenes, insiders wondered if the spotlight was blinding Dan to the fundamentals.

“He went out there with great bravado,” says Bragg. “He wanted to be the new Garth Drabinsky and Livent, and we all know how that ended up. In my opinion, he went way too far, way too fast.”

Dan says he simply wanted to stand out from the competition. This brings us back to the turf war.

Key Brand Entertainment Inc., a New York private investment firm that develops theatre, acquired eight North American properties from Live Nation, including Toronto’s Canon and Panasonic theatres.

Dan, who had invested in Key Brand, was tapped to manage the Canadian theatres. But there was a glitch: Mirvish already had a long-term lease agreement at those theatres. He also had first right to purchase the theatres if they were sold.

As one source explains: “Essentially, the power (Mirvish) had was to shut them down until 2015 by not agreeing to any of the shows.”

John Gore, Key Brand’s chief executive, perhaps sensing he had strayed into a combat zone without a flak jacket, called Mirvish and asked for a meeting.

Mirvish said he had no interest in talking if Key Brand did not abide by the pre-existing contract. During one discussion, Gore said Key Brand was looking to unload the theatres. This triggered Mirvish’s legal right to make an offer, which he did.

Dan, blindsided by the chain of events, sought an injunction to block the sale. This was denied. He also filed a lawsuit against Key Brand and Mirvish Productions. The suit went to arbitration in Los Angeles, where after three years a judge returned Dan’s $12.5 million investment in Key Brand.

“I never expected the theatres to be sold completely from under me,” says Dan, shaking his head and tapping the table. “I was thrown right under the bus. That’s what happened. Someone had to be sacrificed, one way or the other.”

The imbroglio, he says, was “the nail in the coffin that stopped me.”

“I knew that it was a David and Goliath situation from the start,” he says, of going head to head with Mirvish. “And I was the David.”

But did it have to be this way? What happened to the spirit of unity?

Sources close to Mirvish say the company was willing to rent Dan space in their theatres. Dan says they wanted to charge him “rack-rate plus.”

Sources close to Mirvish say the company was willing to partner on projects and share back-end resources, including marketing and advertising. They even offered Dan a chance to collaborate on We Will Rock You.

Dan’s response: “They wanted me as an investor for We Will Rock You, not a co-producer. I wasn’t interested in being an investor. I wanted to be the producer who ran it.”

Now that it’s over, at least for now, the question becomes: What does the rise and fall of Dancap reveal about the state of commercial theatre in Toronto?

“I sometimes say to friends who are thinking of investing in shows that you are technically better off going to the track and betting it on a horse,” quips Tony Award-winning director McAnuff. “Aubrey absolutely put his money where his mouth is. He stepped up with a substantial investment. And I hate to see anyone lose their money that way. I think it discourages others. That might be the most important thing that comes out of this.”

“It’s quite possible the market can’t sustain another large commercial producer,” says Michael Rubinoff, associate dean of the theatre program at Sheridan College. “What I do believe the market can do, and it’s something I’ve been personally involved in, is it can sustain independent commercial producers.”

One insider, who had dealings with both Mirvish and Dan, says while they have profoundly different styles and personalities, the tragedy is Toronto audiences could have benefited from peaceful co-existence.

“David is extremely intelligent and extraordinarily gentle,” says the source. “He has a genuine love for the theatre. He wants these stories to resonate and have meaning. . . . Yes, Aubrey can be brash and abrasive. But he also cares deeply about the city and gets things done. Imagine what might’ve been had they joined forces.”

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